When you burp, your stomach contracts and your esophagus relaxes, allowing air to expel. When you hiccup, your diaphragm contracts, and your esophagus closes up. I dunno. Kinda. I'm mock-hiccupping and burping as I type this and that seems to be what's going on.
When all three contract, everything jams up, and that hurts.
Cool story time: Sometimes I hiccup really hard and it's kind of painful. Thanks for coming to my TED talk
Functionally they're no different. LMDE draws its packages from Debian (probably stable) repos while mainline Mint draws from Ubuntu's. So yes, Mint will have overall newer packages than LMDE but it's generally rare for that to affect your ability to get work done unless some new feature you were waiting for gets introduced.
Ubuntu is the Enterprise fork of Debian backed by Canonical, and as such have contributed some controversy into the ecosystem.
Ubuntu leverages Snap packages which are considered 'bloaty' and 'slow' by a plurality of people with opinions on these matters. They work. Mint incorporates the Snap store into their package management. You might just need to turn it on in the settings.
With mainline Mint you get new base OS packages with Ububtu's release cycle, and the Snap store.
In the case of LMDE then, you can run a stable base OS on Debian's rock-solid foundation, their release cycle, and still get your fresh software from the Snap store.
IMO, they're the same for like 85% of use cases. I find I end up going to extra measures to disable certain Ubuntu-isms on my own systems that run it, effectively reverting it to Debian by another name.
As a student and occasional gamer, the trade off is having a stable base for your learning needs, and still be able to get the latest user desktop apps from Snap.
Oh, shoot. If you're gonna roll your own then that's probably the better play because at least then the firmware won't be all locked down and you can pick known-compatible parts. Get it with no OS and sort it out later if you need to.
It's easy enough to buy a Windows license key later on if you need it. The school night even make it available you at a student discount. Boot it from a USB drive, even.
Heck, I ran Linux on my college computers back in the 90s. It was just a thing you did. Ah, memories...
Anyhoo, it largely depends on the school but for most intents and purposes Windows, Mac and Linux are interoperable. By that I mean they can generally open, manipulate and share all of the common document formats natively, with some minor caveats.
Many schools also have access to Microsoft O365, which makes the MS Office online suite available as well. All you really need to use that is a web browser.
I work in an office environment these days where Windows, Mac and Linux are all well supported and are in broad use. I use Linux (Debian) exclusively, my one coworker is all-windows and a third is all-mac. Our boss uses Windows on the desktop, but also uses a Macbook. We are able to collaborate and exchange data without many problems.
I would say the two main challenges you're liable to face will be when Word files include forms or other uncommon formatting structures. LibreOffice is generally able to deal with them, but may mangle some fonts & formatting. Its not common but it does happen.
The other main challenge could be required courseware-- specialized software used in a curriculum for teaching-- and proctor software for when you're taking exams online. Those might require Windows or Mac
If it ever comes up, Windows will run in a Virtual Machine (VM) just fine. VirtualBox by Oracle is generally free for individual use, and is relatively easy to start up. Your laptop will probably come with Windows pre-installed, so you could just nuke it, install Linux, install VirtualBox, and then install Windows as a VM using the license that came with your laptop. You'd need to ask an academic advisor at the school if that's acceptable for whatever proctor software they use.
I recommend against dual-booting a Windows environment if you can avoid it. Linux & Windows are uneasy roommates, and will occasionally wipe out the other's boot loader. It's not terribly difficult to recover, but there is a risk that could (will) happen at the WORST possible moment. However, it might be unavoidable if they use proctor software that requires windows on bare metal. Again, you'd have to ask the school.
I think you're right. There's this sense that you need to strike a balance between introducing and participating in a discussion, but not monopolizing it or monologuing. I think it depends on the topic, too.
I wrote more, but just ended up saying the same thing as someone else here. Suffice to say, I try not to comment on my own posts unless I'm responding to a specific comment because I've probably already made my points in the post text.
Bravo!
Um... Next time !unclejokes@lemmy.world tho.
But really, I liked this one.